Above, a rare black and white promo for Teruo Ishii's bizarro thriller Kaidan nobori ryu, aka Blind Woman’s Curse, et al, starring Meiko Kaji, and released today in 1970. See more on this film here, here, and here. 

Some of our proudest shares on this website have been the rare posters we've shown you for Hijirimen bakuto, aka, Hidirimen bakuto, aka Red Silk Gambler. All of those amazing promos have now proliferated online and you'll often see them used whenever someone writes about the movie. Well, we have one more to add to the mix, which is the tateken sized promo featuring all the main cast members—Hiroko Fuji, Junko Matsudaira, Mitsue Horikoshi, Eiko Nakamura, Sanae Tsuchida, Reiichi Hatanaka, and Reiko Ike. This should pretty much cover it for this film. Click here and scroll to see the entire collection. Hijirimen bakuto premiered in Japan today in 1972. 

Above, an alternate promo poster for Kaidan nobori ryu, aka Blind Woman’s Curse, et al, with imagery slightly different from the others we showed you, which can see here. 

Back in November of 2014 we shared a vanishingly rare tatekan style promo poster for Teruo Ishii’s Hijirimen bakuto, aka Red Silk Gambler. Today we’ve finally gotten around to sharing the other five matching tatekans, new to any website, and unwatermarked for your enjoyment. Though that may change soon. The stars of these posters are, top to bottom, Hiroko Fuji, Junko Matsudaira, Mitsue Horikoshi, Eiko Nakamura, and Sanae Tsuchida. By the way, IMDB calls this movie Hijirimen bakuto, but many other sources, especially those based in Japan, call it Hidirimen bakuto. As far as we know, both are technically correct, but maybe one of our Japanese speaking friends can confirm that. You can see our first write-up on this film here. 

Above, a rare alternate poster for the very entertaining pinku flick Hidirimen bakuto, aka Red Silk Gambler, with Reiko Ike. The movie, which we touched upon briefly a few years ago, opened in Japan today in 1972.

Teruo Ishii’s Kyôfu kikei ningen: Edogawa Rampo zenshû, aka Horrors of Malformed Men, or sometimes Horror of a Deformed Man, is a movie that touched sensitive nerves in Japan when it was released. Not only was it gruesome and somewhat erotic, but the malformed men were a direct reference to Japan’s post-nuclear nightmare. The fact that their physicality mimicked Japan’s Butoh dance form, a type of performance emphasizing bizarre movements, made the movie even more disturbing. So much so that it was banned upon release and really only gained widespread availability upon being licensed for DVD. It premiered in Japan today in 1969, which brings us to the point of sharing it with you—it’s Halloween in the US, and in Latin American countries it’s the beginning of Dia de Muertos, or Day of the Dead. Japan celebrates neither holiday, but we can’t imagine anything serving as better homage than Japanese horror posters. Below you’ll find an unlucky thirteen of them for movies released in Japan between 1954 and 1969. Information on each appears below the art.

Bin Kato’s Kaibyo Oumaga-tsuji, aka Cat Ghost of Ouma Cross, 1954. Japanese horror is rife with ghost cats, presumably because the concept dates back to early folklore. In this movie a kabuki actress is murdered via ingesting poison, and when a cat licks up some of her blood it becomes possessed by her very angry spirit. We never thought we’d see another blood-swilling cat. We were wrong.

Yoshihiro Ishikawa’s Kaibyô noroi numa, aka Ghost-Cat Cursed Pond, 1968. Both the standard promo and the panel length art appear above. This one is a period piece set in the 1600s, and the mechanism this time involves a woman who, rather than accept a forced marriage to the man who brought about her husband’s death, instead drowns herself and her pet feline. Cue mayhem.

Kinnosuke Fukuda’s Kaibyo karakuri tenjo, aka Ghost-Cat of Karakuri Tenjo, also sometimes referred to as Ghost Cat in the Ceiling, 1958. We haven’t seen this one, and neither has anyone else, apparently, because we can’t find anything on it. But if the cat in the ceiling is anything like this one, we’re terrified.

Kenji Misumi’s Kaibyo Noroi No Kabe, aka Ghost Cat Cursed Wall, also sometimes referred to as Ghost Cat Wall of Hatred, 1969. In this one, a noblewoman accused of an affair is sealed behind the wall of a mausoleum with—wait for it—a cat. Pretty soon an image of the cat appears on the wall, and the fact that it can’t be removed is an indication of the catastrophe—oh no we didn't—to come.

Kazuo Mori’s Akadô Suzunosuke: Mitsume no chôjin, aka Red-armored Suzunosuke: Three-Eyed Birdman, 1958. We cleverly transition from cats to birds with this poster. The movie, which was adapted from a comic book and led to a film series of which this is the seventh installment, is the tale of a samurai battling an evil gang of demonic beasts led by what looks like a demented Foghorn Leghorn. We waited all film, but not once did it quip, "I say, I say, I say, boy, chicken cordon blow me."

Katsuhiko Tasaka’s Kaidan yonaki-doro, aka Ghost Story: Crying in the Night Lantern, 1962. This one we haven’t seen, but it seems to be the story of a man who exposes a crime and ends up buried alive for his troubles, a terrible punishment referred to in the States as being "Manninged." No word on whether there’s a cat in there with him.

Kimiyoshi Yasuda’s Kaidan Kasane-ga-fuchi, aka The Depths, The Ghost of Kasane, and The Ghosts of Kasane Swamp, 1960. This is complicated to explain. Basically, a demand to repay a debt leads to murder, followed by the victim’s body being dumped in a swamp. The victim’s ghost rises from the swamp and tricks the murderer into killing his own wife, which leads to him drowning himself in the same swamp. The story then leaps forward to examine the consequences on the victim’s daughter and the murderer’s son, Romeo and Juliet style: “My god—your dad disappeared in Kasane Swamp too? It’s like we were made for each other!”

This poster is for a triple feature of Michio Yamamoto’s Noroi no yakata: Chi o suu me, aka Lake of Dracula, Nobuo Nakagawa’s Tôkaidô Yotsuya kaidan, aka Ghost of Yotsuya, and a third movie that has something to do with a swamp (though presumably not Kasane Swamp), and maybe hell too. We won’t get into synopses for these, but you can see a trailer for Lake of Dracula here, and for Ghost Story of Yatsuya here.

Tokuzô Tanaka’s Kaidan yukijorô, aka Ghost Story of the Snow Fairy, or sometimes The Snow Woman, 1968. In this one a sculptor and apprentice venture into the mountains seeking a special wood they plan to use to build a statue. A snow witch (standard in Japanese folklore) kills the sculptor but spares the apprentice, who continues his life and work, but with the whole icy episode hanging over his head. Soon he meets a beautiful young woman, falls in love and marries her, thus condemning her to that special brand of hopeful impoverishment reserved for the talented poor. Oh, and more witch.

Hiroshi Matsuno’s Kyûketsu dokuro-sen, aka Ghost Ship: Living Skeleton, or sometimes just The Living Skeleton, 1968. Cited as an influence on John Carpenter’s The Fog, the story opens with a massacre aboard a ship and the rest deals with events of supernatural justice set into motion by relatives of the murder victims. Since living skeletons don’t really figure into this, it should probably just be called “Ghost Ship,” like the 2002 American horror flick that ripped it off.

Nobuo Nakagawa’s Kaidan hebi-onna aka Snake Woman’s Curse, 1968. As you have doubtless noted, revenge is a strong motif in Japanese horror, and this one is no exception. When an old man dies in debt to a rich landowner, his wife and daughter become, according to feudal law, indentured servants. The landowner is astonishingly cruel, which means the widow and daughter suffer all the expected indignities and violations—multiple times—but just when he thinks he’s going to get away with his misdeeds things start to go pear-shaped for him. Trailer here.

We’ll have more Japanese poster collections down the line. Happy Halloween/Day of the Dead everyone.

We thought the last Meiko Kaji poster we found featured the creepiest black cat of all time. We stand corrected. The above poster is for Teruo Ishii’s 1970 blood splatterer Kaidan nobori ryu, aka The Tattooed Swordswoman, aka Black Cat’s Revenge, aka Blind Woman’s Curse, aka Strange Tales of Dragon Tattoo, aka we’ll just stop there and tell you what it’s about. It’s about… well, we aren’t completely sure what it’s about, because we had to watch it without subtitles. Sometimes that doesn’t matter, but this movie is a bit abstract so the plot was hard to follow. Actually, even the actors seemed confused at times. But even if we can’t tell you exactly what it’s about, we can tell you what it has.

There might be more than one black cat, now that we think about it, because it keeps popping up. Near as we can tell, Kaji thinks she’s cursed by this creature, and that it was sent by the little girl she blinded.

There’s a lot of horror movie stuff going on as well, including a guy wokking some severed body parts. Did they ever do hands on the original Iron Chef? They definitely did sea cucumber, but hands, can't be sure. Probably should have, though.

There are some flayings. Members of Kaji’s gang have the dragon tattoos forcibly removed from their backs. It’s fatal, in case you’re wondering. One of the flayed victims ends up pressed against a pane of glass like a Delta Zeta kissing her jock boyfriend. No idea what that was about.

All of this leads to a climactic bloodbath. And we really mean bloodbath. Bad guys end up snorkeling in their own bodily fluids as Kaji pretty much juliennes everyone that crosses her path.

And that’s all we’ve got, because with virtually zero command of Japanese the plot nuances are beyond us, especially the whole haunting and evil spirit thing. But when a movie looks this good, it’s easy to enjoy even without total (or even partial) comprehension. Hopefully we’ll find a subtitled version somewhere and get a chance to screen this epic again. But even if we don’t, it was time well spent.

Above is a nice poster for the Japanese actioner Hijirimen bakuto, aka Red Silk Gambler. Set about a hundred years in the past, this one is more of a samurai flick than a typical pinku, but whatever it is, it’s beautifully shot by director Teruo Ishii and cinematographer Shigeru Akatsuka. It stars Hiroko Fuji as the titular gambler, and co-stars Reiichi Hatanaka, Yoko Horikoshi, and the indispensable Reiko Ike. Check the great screen caps we posted below. Hijirimen bakuto premiered in Japan today in 1972.